So, it’s already been a week since my last post? Yikes. A lot’s happened, and not all of it uplifting (though we had a swell Thanksgiving, and hope you did, too). So, bereft of inspiration, I’m repurposing a little something I wrote around 10 years back when Beth visited our friend Sheelagh in Northern Ireland and left Hanni home with me. I hope you enjoy it.

I was Hanni’s favorite…until Beth got home.

For years after my wife lost her eyesight, I dreaded when she went away without me. Not trusting a world of redcaps, connecting flights, and shuttle buses, I worried about her travels more than she did. I always imagined the worst, fretting until she returned home, safe.

Now she travels alone regularly. I’m still unhappy, but for less admirable reasons. A couple days before she goes out of town there’s a mix of sadness and tension. For her, it’s all anticipation and packing and every once in awhile an “I’m going to miss you.” For me it’s “I’m going to miss you, have a good time, but how come I’m stuck at home taking care of things while you’re having a good time?”

On her last trip she went to Northern Ireland, which meant she couldn’t take Hanni, her Seeing Eye guide dog. I’ll save the explanation, but it has to do with rabies quarantines and such. For a week, while Beth yucked it up and drank Guinness in a nice little pub with our friends, Hanni and I would be stuck with each other.

Still, on the day she left, I got a jolt of that thing that made Tom Cruise dance in his underwear in Risky Business when his parents left him home alone. No rules!

Except I’m not a teen-age Tom Cruise. I’m not an anything Tom Cruise. And there’s nothing I want to do that I haven’t done or don’t do regularly while my wife’s around. After 20 years of marriage, she’s seen it all; it’s not like I have to wait until she’s gone. If I had friends she despises I would make a point of seeing them. Except all my friends are her friends, too.

So my guilty pleasures amounted to eating food she’d never eat—barbecued ribs that night—and incessant channel surfing, watching sports, staying up into the wee hours catching fragments of action movies she’d never watch on cable TV. All because I could. The next morning I was groggy and heart-burned, wondering why I did this to myself.

With no payoff for her absence, I brooded. I was joined this time by Hanni, who acted like a child who’d been left with a mean relative. She went into a deep mope, curling up to sleep near the door to our apartment—she never, ever sleeps there otherwise.

And so for the first couple evenings, there we lay, me on the couch with remote in hand, she on the floormat by the door.

But after a couple of days, I started getting used to not having to consult with anyone on what to eat, what to do, where to go, or when to go there. To walking down the block to our local, just because I felt like it, to read the paper at the bar while sipping a beer. The good parts of being single that single people take for granted.

And there were good reports on the notes left by the dog-walker we hired for the week. “We had a great time at the park. Hanni was perfect, stopping at every curb. #1: Check. #2: Check. Gave her a treat.”

Hanni didn’t mind the new life, either. She wasn’t threading a blind woman through chaotic Chicago traffic anymore, but she still got fed and petted lavishly. I took her for long walks, she played with other dogs, and their companions struck up dog conversations with me.

Hanni and I bonded. I became certain we shared an ambivalence about my wife’s return. Who does she think she is, anyway? She goes away, we have to adjust. She wants to come back, we have to adjust. It’s all about her.

When a week passed, I left the office to pick up my wife at the airport. My cell phone rang, I answered, and a British woman introduced herself. She told me she sat next to my wife on the plane, that they had a great time talking, and that she’d help her to the curb with her luggage. I pulled up to find my wife and her British flying chum.

After I grabbed her bag, my wife said a hasty goodbye to her helper and we were off.

Like always, we started in as if resuming an interrupted conversation, each pouring out stories of the past few days as I drove downtown from O’Hare.

My stories stunk by comparison, of course. Between lists of who called, what teams won what games, and other droll details, I strategically mentioned the hardships I—and this time, the dog—suffered in my wife’s absence.

And like always, she ignored this accounting.

I made do with having made my comments for an imaginary record. We moved on to dinner plans for the night, the wheres, whats and whens, and charted out the rest of our week.

At home, whatever special bond the dog and I had forged evaporated before my eyes as Hanni, completely forgetful, forgiving, or both, threw herself at her partner without giving me a second look.

And it was like my wife never left.

The success of our “Mondays with Mike” feature has a lot of you blog readers wondering: what does my husband Mike Knezovich do for a living? An online article in the Chicago Tribune helps explain. (The print piece is scheduled for Sunday.)

Katrin Klingenberg is featured in a Tribune article about passive house and PHIUS.

The Tribune story profiles architect Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder of a non-profit called Passive House Institute U.S. That’s where Mike works, but we usually refer to it as PHIUS.

I’ve written here before about how Mike met Katrin, and now this excellent short piece in the Tribune explains what Passive House is:

“Passive house” is a concept based on a set of design principles used to create buildings that use minimal heating/cooling, employing elements such as thick insulation, energy-recovery ventilation, high-performance windows and a steady supply of fresh air.

Born in Germany, Katrin had seen Europeans applying passive principles to buildings for decades. “But their principles only applied to the European temperate climate,” she told the Tribune reporter, explaining how she’d applied it to America’s extreme temperatures.
PHIUS started in 2007 and has already trained 2,000 architects, engineers, builders and energy raters. It’s certified 129 buildings, with many more in the works.

Now, PHIUS works with policymakers to get passive-house principles into local building codes.  They’re working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the next generation of climate-specific passive-building standards, too — those standards will be much more energy-efficient than the current International Energy Conservation Code. Katrin told the reporter that we absolutely must solve the climate crisis. “Energy-efficient buildings do make a difference,” she said.

As Director of Communications, Mike
helps get the word out via the Web, Social Media, trade and general interest press, and the organization’s annual conference. This article — which includes what Mike tells me is a terrific photo of Katrin — will help those efforts. Give the article a read yourself, and don’t miss the extra Q&A with Katrin at the end.

Every once in a while my part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters asks me to do something out of my comfort zone. Writing a letter to my teenage self was one of those things.

That’s me in the hospital in high school. (Photo courtesy Laura Gale.)

I’ll try to explain. Earlier this month Easter Seals helped expand Thrive, a mentorship program for young women who have disabilities. Thrive’s Letters to Thrive blog encourages women with disabilities to write letters to their younger selves. The hope is that young women might read the letters and benefit from the lessons other women learned growing up with a disability.

I didn’t grow up with a disability (I lost my sight when I was 26) but my supervisor at Easter Seals still thought it’d be a great idea for me to write a letter to my teenage self. “They can post it on the Letters to Thrive blog, and we can publish it on the Easter Seals blog, too.”

I supposed I could write about the disease that caused me to lose my sight, but I don’t like thinking — or writing — about going through high school with Type 1 diabetes. I already had to write about that for Long Time, No See, and I much prefer thinking about the goofy and fun times I had as a teenager. You know, rather than the hospital visits. I respect my supervisor at Easter Seals, though, and I like working with her. I agreed to write the letter.

The Letters to Thrive site was easy to access with my talking computer, and it even has a What Should I Write About? link for those with writer’s block.

I’d love to tell you that composing this letter was enlightening or, ahem, eye-opening. Truth is, it left me feeling bittersweet — sad for my younger self, while simultaneously hopeful for the future. My letter was published on the Letters to Thrive blog last week, and I’ll paste it below. But first I must give credit where credit is due. Mike Knezovich provided the Nostradamus reference — I would have never come up with that on my own!

20 November 2014

Dear Younger Self,

The blip on your popularity chart peaked off the screen last week when you returned to high school — other kids think it’s cool to know someone who was in the hospital and was almost in a coma.

Right now the two shots you take each day are long-acting insulins, far too slow and weak to handle the carbohydrates in the popcorn you like to snack on, the ten-cent rice dish you buy to save money in the high school cafeteria at lunch and the ice cream you cheat with from time to time.

This was your third hospital visit during your high school years, and before you were released this time, your doctor declared you won’t live to see your 30th birthday. What you and your doctor don’t know right now is that before you turn 30, people with Type 1 diabetes will be able to test their blood glucose levels at home throughout the day. They’ll use an insulin pump or take a shot of fast-acting insulin to counteract the sugar and carbohydrates in all sorts of foods. You’ll be able to be more spontaneous, you won’t have to plan every meal, and you won’t have to feel guilty when you snack.

What your doctor could have told you as you left the hospital this time was to keep taking care of yourself the best you can — that way you’ll live to enjoy these breakthroughs. Your doctor isn’t a bad man, and in the end, the impact his Nostradamus prediction made on you won’t necessarily be the one he intended. In fact, it’s already sparked a sense of urgency in you: you want to squeeze in a full life before you turn thirty. You’re on a streak where you’re saying yes to almost any opportunity for adventure that comes your way, and now, speaking to you 40 years later, I say…go, girl!

One of the major (if only) advantages of having a chronic disease or disability when you are young is that it can give you the wisdom to understand life could be cut short at any time. Keep working at staying healthy — that way you’ll steer clear of the hospital and have more time for adventures.

Keep taking advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Open yourself up to all sorts of people. See what you can see. Experience what you can.

Choosing a full life now will expose you to many people of many cultures making many different choices. You’ll witness people going through transitions and see how the decisions they make during those times affect their well-being later.

Younger self, I can tell you now that you are going to live past thirty. I can also tell you that you are going to face a lot of life-altering changes along the way, and the people you meet the next ten years or so will be the role models who will inspire you when you go through these changes later on.

Get out there and meet them. Listen to them. Learn from them.

And above all, keep having fun!

Love from your future self

Most of the time I walk the mile-and-a-quarter to and from work. But when the weather here in Chicago turns extreme, or I’m running late, I take the Red Line subway.

The Red Line runs from the South Side, through Chinatown, to the North Side, so the cars are full of human diversity. White people, black people, men, women, old, young, Asian people, Sox fans, Cub fans (it stops at U.S. Cellular and Wrigley Field.)

At rush hour, train cars are standing-room-only. Which makes for the elevator dynamic. People looking at their shoes, their phones, but mostly not at each other.
Which gives snoopy observers like me a great chance to study people. And their faces.

For a snoopy observer white guy like me, it’s been a revelation to study black people’s faces. Because, you know, they are remarkably different from one another. Like, you know, white people’s. And I wonder about where they came from. Not as in Alabama or Mississippi, but as in, where in Africa? In the world? I’ve got a lifetime of accumulated data about caucasian facial traits, but not for black people.

I am not ashamed to admit that this is a revelation, because my ignorance has been born of lack of exposure. It’s not a whole lot different than the kinds of revelations I had visiting Europe for the first time and understanding that hey, yes, their refrigerators are smaller but these people live a pretty damn good life and Americans aren’t the only people who live well. Live and learn.

Anyway, growing up, I mostly only saw black people on TV, and largely, they were a sort of an abstraction. There was not a single black person in any of the schools I attended, and I don’t think there was a single black person living in my town, though I could be wrong about that. My town was full of white-flighters who’d left the city expressly to not be around black people. (I’ve learned since then that both white and black people were victims of scurrilous blockbusting and redlining practices, but that’s another story). So, while I got to see lots of faces of Czech, Polish, Italian, Irish, Dutch, Croat, Serb, and other heritages — and the vivid differences between them — I saw no black ones. And it led to the sense that one black face was all black faces.

When my family would drive into the city we’d pass the enormous housing projects alongside the Dan Ryan expressway and to me, they were scary places inhabited by scary people. And I kinda figured that all the people in those places were scary, and they were all the same.

Happily I know better than that now, partly from simply living long enough to remain clueless. But it doesn’t just happen. Some of it takes pushing out of one’s comfort zone, and simply paying attention. Some of it comes from leaders – political, cultural, and artistic – pushing me. I still remember walking out of Do the Right Thing a smarter person than when I entered. The notion that that there were hierarchies, good people, bad people, and shades of gray in what I thought was a monolithic “black” world was exhilarating, liberating, and embarrassing at the same time.

It works both ways, of course. A recent NPR story on the limitations of the accuracy of eyewitness accounts, and of lineup identifications in criminal cases, noted that all cross-racial IDs were substantially less accurate.

I’ve been thinking about all this partly because a couple weeks ago Beth and I took in our annual movie at a real movie theater. It was Dear White People. I thought it was well-made, extremely well acted. But it was not revelatory, for me, in the same way that Do the Right Thing was. And I realized that it was less about the movies and more because I’ve learned a lot over the past few decades.

Having grown during the 1960s, I never thought of myself as a racist. Because conceptually, I wasn’t. There was a clear right side to be on in theory at least. But experiences – from meeting and befriending people who don’t fit my preconceptions to simply going to movies like Do the Right Thing have taught me that beyond cross-burning hate, there are less overt but harmful biases we all carry. I’ve lived with particular flavors of that dynamic since Beth lost her sight and Gus was born with severe developmental disabilities. People make assumptions without knowing a thing about me or us. It’s not always been happy, but seeing those things has been good for me.

So I feel good that on one hand, I’ve come a long way, and that we’ve come a long way. On the other, I’ve never been so certain that for all the progress we’ve made, there’s a long, long way to go. And I’m not, and we’re not, going to get there by accident.

Last Thursday I spoke to a U of I class in Champaign. Monday morning I spoke with second graders at Chicago’s Francis Xavier Warde School. Yesterday I spoke to visually-impaired adults at Blind Service Association.

Each of these three presentations ended with a Q&A, which lead’s me to today’s quiz. Tell me if the following questions came from a college kid, a second-grader, or an adult with a visual impairment :

1. How do you know what you’re wearing?
2. How does it feel to be blind?
3. What is the name of your book?
4. What’s your favorite thing to do with your dog?
5. What is it like to be blind?
6. When you’re up there in front of us, do you picture what we look like?
7. Do you know my girlfriend?
8. So is there one thing that’s happened since you’ve been blind that you just can’t picture, you know, like instagram, or, like something like that?
9. Is it sad to be blind?

That’s the quiz, now for the answers – let’s see how you did.

At Frances Xavier Warde last week.

1. A college girl asked this. I was wearing black shoes, black jeans, a gold sweater and a colorful scarf. The shoestrings on my black shoes feel different than the shoestrings on my gym shoes. I put a safety pin on the tag of my clothes that are black, and the gold sweater is the only one I own that has a cowl neck (so I just memorize that the one with the cowl neck is gold). My multi-colored scarf is the only one I own that has textured stripes I can feel, and the woman who sold it to me said it’d go with anything. “Does it?” I asked the class. They chorused a yes.
2. A second-grader asked this one. I’ve been blind half my life now, I told her. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it usually just seems normal.”
3. A visually-impaired adult asked this. My talk was about memoir writing, so gee, you’d think I might have mentioned the name of my book, huh! I’d forgotten, though, and when I told him my memoir is called Long Time, No See, he said he knew my story sounded familiar. “I read the audio version!”
4.  The college talk I gave was to an animal sciences class, so you’d think this question would have come from a student there. But no, it came from a very cute second-grader. I’d never been asked this before, and I needed to take a few seconds to think before answering. “You probably guess I’ll say playing fetch with a ball, or having her chase a Frisbee,” I said. “But really, my favorite thing to do with Whitney is have her lead me to a place downtown, you know, get there by ourselves.” I explained how good it makes me feel to have confidence in my Seeing Eye dog.
5. Another second-grader asked this question after I’d answered it the first time. She was no dummy: she didn’t buy my first answer! This time I admitted that being blind can be frustrating. “It can take longer to do certain things,” I conceded. “And I always have to remind myself to slow down so I won’t fumble around so much.” They seemed to like that fumble word.
6. A college kid asked this, and I told them the last time I was able to see was 30 years ago. “So I picture you all dressed like college kids in the 80s.” They gasped, and then they laughed.
7. An adult with a visual impairment asked this. “She’s from Champaign,” he said. And know what? I do know her.
8. A guy in the college class asked this one. There are tons of things I can’t picture, but the one that stands out is 911. “The plane going into the building, the smoke, the people jumping,” I said, explaining that I went up in the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building in Chicago when I could still see. I remember how little the cars looked from up there, and how slowly they seemed to be travelling on the highways below. “But I just can’t picture how little the people who were trapped on top of those towers looked, or what it was like to see them jumping off the buildings, all of that.” It felt shameful to be intrigued by such a gruesome event, but I try to be honest when answering questions people ask at the presentations I give. I didn’t want the students to try to describe 911 to me – heck, they were only 6 or 7 years old when it happened. “Lots of people have tried explaining it all to me already, I’ve read books and articles, listened to TV shows and documentaries about that day,” I told them. . “I just can’t get it into my head.”
9. This same question about my feelings came from yet another second-grader. At Francis Xavier Warde School the students spend a lot of their year in second grade learning about special needs, and I think these second graders were worried about me. “You’d think being blind might make me sad, or maybe lonely, but it really isn’t that bad,” I assured them, explaining some of the benefits of being blind. “One of them is that I can’t judge people by what they look like — I get to judge people by what they say, and what they do.” Judging from the concern those little kids showed about my feelings Monday, the second-graders at Francis Xavier Warde School in Chicago are beautiful.